A leaning monument to the district's pain, this four-story courthouse is a crumbling marvel of cracked plaster and chipped marble. Once a testament to justice wrought in shining white stone, the courthouse is now a crushed dream, its wretched exterior corrupted by a bloated evil festering within.
Rainwater from a recent downpour mixed with mulch oozes from ruptures in the rock like pus bubbling from a wound. The structure of the eastern wing of the upper floor buckled long ago, and now the bell tower tilts perilously, appearing as though it might careen to the ground below at any moment.
Two massive pillars frame the heavy oak doors of the court. The pillars' surfaces run with cracks and fissures like so many burst veins. The doors sag in their archway like the drooping eyes of a madman. The surrounding structures long ago fell in upon themselves in supplication to the creaking courthouse.
A salt wind blows up the precipice and rakes across the tangled weeds of Beldrin's Bluff. The whole building groans as the wind blows, its tortured lamentation fading to a rasping hiss as the wind ebbs. This croaking murmur never completely fades away. The sun sets in the west, the last slivers of twilight painting the courthouse blood red as darkness creeps closer.
Slowly, the vision fades away as you return to consciousness, but the sight that greets you is almost as disturbing. The dying gray light of sunset peeks though slits in the boarded windows, barely illuminating a yawning bench covered in cobwebs. A shadowed mural on the domed ceiling above depicts Iomedae in her shining plate mail of gilded sunlight, locked in mortal combat with Norgorber, Calistia, and Asmodeus, holding the trifecta of evil at bay with her shining sword. You find yourself in a jurors’ box, and you are not alone. In the other chairs, figures sit in the darkness each emerging from troubling dreams into a new nightmare.
You also see six other people in the room.
- A blond human female in her 40s,
- an angry looking male hobgoblin that is missing pieces of his ears,
- a male gnome that is missing teeth and is a sorry looking excuse of a jester,
- a scarred and dirty half-orc male,
- a human male in his middle age that has the build of someone seasoned in battle. He wears the holy symbol of Iomedae and is wearing chainmail,
- and an elegantly-dressed elderly human male in a white suit.